Summary of “No One Knows What Britain Is Anymore”

“After Brexit, no one is trying to help now. They’ve given up. Nobody on the Continent really cares that much about Britain anymore. Even worse, people feel the country will fall into the hands of Jeremy Corbyn and that will do more damage than Brexit itself.” More chilling, perhaps, is the impact on countries less rooted than Britain once appeared to be. The European country considered the most outward-looking and globalized is fractured by the backlash against the very model that made Britain strong. There are many who see Britain as having suffered a sudden nervous breakdown, said Simon Tilford, an economist and deputy director of the Center for European Reform. Rather than a vote for a global Britain and economic liberalism, Mr. Tilford said, Brexit was a vote for protectionism, and its political system now “Is deeply provincial and introverted at a time when Britain is supposed to be heading out into the world.” Confused and divided, Britain no longer has an agreed-upon national narrative, said Charles Grant, director of the Center for European Reform. “Global Britain, open Britain, generous Britain.” But now there is a competition between that narrative and the nativist one. Mr. Grant, like others who have spent their careers watching British and European politics, predicts rough seas for Britain as it casts off nearly 45 years of intimate trade and legal ties with those annoying Europeans.